Reform UK's Zia Yusuf vows to axe Lords if they block Trump-style deportation squads

Reform UK's Zia Yusuf vows to axe Lords if they block Trump-style deportation squads The party's Home Affairs spokesman said Reform is ready to tear up Britain's constitution to get its way on hardline deportations - and he aired a string of conspiracy theories about the Makerfield by-election Reform UK's Zia Yusuf last night threatened to tear up Britain's constitution to force through plans for a Donald Trump-style "deportation force". Mr Yusuf, the party's home affairs spokesman, was in Washington DC to give a speech to the Heritage Foundation, a right wing think tank, on "Saving Britain and Saving the West". He's also understood to have met with MAGA politicians in Congress during his visit. Among Yusuf's proposals to "save Britain" would be deporting hundreds of thousands of people currently living legally in the UK. The plan would be enforced by a "deportation force" inspired by ICE, the heavy-handed immigration squads Trump has been deploying in US cities. Yusuf insisted Reform's ICE squads would be well trained and professional. But he said he was prepared to take extreme measures including abolishing the House of Lords if peers tried to block a Reform government pushing ahead with his hardline deportation plan. "If the House of Lords get in the way," he said during the event on Thursday, "we'll just sack the House of Lords. I hope it won't come to that." Asked if he thought Reform UK's plans would provoke a "civil war" in Britain, he said he did not. "Do I foresee lots of protests, lots of people walking out of the Civil Service? Unfortunately I expect that." He added: "We won't be pushed off course by a bunch of activists and their media partners." Mr Yusuf went on to air a string of Trump-style conspiracy theories about "foreign money" being pumped into the UK to fund opposition to Reform's hard-right agenda - even claiming, without providing any evidence, that there was a foreign interference campaign going on in the Makerfield by-election. "There's these people, highly organised people turning up with well-printed placards. Not for a particular party, but attacking our party. Where's the money coming from?" Trump made the same unfounded claim about anti-ICE protests in Minnesota earlier this year.